Oldest Hebrew Text
| Khirbet Qeiyafa | 31 41 16.66N 34 57 28.01E | A disappointingly low-res picture of the site. About all you can identify with confidence is the outline of the outer walls. However start Google, click on "Images" and type in "Khirbet Qeiyafa" to find an aerial view of the site taken from a balloon. |
One of the least favourite parts of excavating - and I think I am not alone in this opinion - is the endless washing up.
I'm not talking about the cleaning of the dishes after expedition members have eaten their meals, nor even the cups left behind by those who indulge in tea and coffee (for some reason few tea or coffee drinkers appear able to wash up their cups and a large number are unable to finish their brews, leaving half-empty cups of cold brown liquid for more conscientious folk to deal with). Rather I am talking about the ancient pottery which has to be washed up at the end of the day's work on the site.
Pottery sherds are, of course, the most common find, ranking second only to dirt itself. Having been brought up in India, where the pottery age was still active, I am aware that pottery cups were used like we might use paper cups - drink once and then throw away. Unfortunately - or fortunately, from the archaeologist's point of view - pottery cups and other vessels are even longer lasting than plastic ones, so there is never any lack of bits of broken pottery on any dig.
The problem, as far as dish-washing is concerned, is that the ancients used broken pottery in much the same way as we use Post-It notes. Love letters, work memos, even official reports, all got scrawled on broken pottery which was read once and then discarded. As writing is rare and precious in Palestine, it is essential that all these bits of text are identified and studied - and that means washing the dirt off every single fragment of pottery in case it bears writing.
Recently the Hebrew University has been conducting excavations at Khirbet Qeiyafa, not far from the Valley of Elah where David had his famous confrontation with Goliath. The site has been identified as an Israelite fortress, probably erected to counter incursions by the feared Philistines and carbon-14 dating of olive seeds found in the ruins has placed it between 900-1000 BC.
On July 8 last year (2008) an Israeli volunteer, Oded Yair, was at work clearing the floor of a room just inside the gate of the fort. He discovered a large, roughly rectangular potsherd and simply because it was large popped it into the "finds" bucket instead of discarding it in the rubbish. After work finished for the day the team had lunch and then settled down to wash the day's haul of pottery and Sang-Yeop Jang, Oded's supervisor, happened to pick that particular bucket to wash. Using a nail brush he quickly cleaned the outside of the sherd and then flipped it over to continue the work on the inside, only to find that the soaking had revealed rows and columns of symbols.
His delighted yell brought the others crowding around and it was quickly realised that this was a unique and important find. The person in charge of the dig pulled out his mobile phone and put a call through to Orna Cohen, the conservator who was handling finds from Khirbet Qeiyafa: What do you do with a wet ostracon bearing ink writing?
The answer was to leave it on several tissues and wait till it dried naturally. This was done and then the rest of the pottery received a cursory scrubbing, after which the team repaired to the nearest source of alcoholic refreshment for a celebratory drink.
When the dig closed down for the weekend the sherd was taken up to Jerusalem and given to Orna Cohen for more professional cleaning than could be provided by a bucket of dirty water and a nail brush. Dr Haggai Misgav was called in to try and decipher the inscription, but unfortunately the conditions in which the potsherd had lain for 3,000 years, added to its soaking in the bucket, meant that the ink had faded badly and the words were hard to read.
Click here to find photographs of the ostracon and of various experts photographing it.
Various kinds of photography were tried - colour, black and white, infra-red, and later on by an imagining spectrometer for reflectance and fluorescence images - and in the twelve months since then agreement has been reached by the various experts on some of the words. "Judge", "slave", "king" and "don't do". This is hardly earth-shattering news, but the most important conclusion is that these words are Hebrew rather than any other language, thus confirming that the Biblical account of Israelite occupation of the area is correct.
Somewhat to the indignation of the excavators, Professor Aren Maeir let the cat out of the bag on a Yahoo newsgroup, writing, "This absolutely fantastic, fortified Iron Age site (late Iron I/early Iron IIA) has a very nice assemblage of pottery, and what may be the most important Iron Age Semitic inscription found in Israel in the last decade! (to be published by Haggai Misgav of the Hebrew University). I can't give details about it, but OH BOY - this is going to be VERY INTERESTING!!!!"
The words which have been deciphered suggest that the full text may have something to do with legal matters and thus may give us new information about Israelite society at this time. What is even more interesting is that the date - 900-1000 BC - puts it at the time when, according to the Bible, the Israelites had newly moved from a tribal organisation to having a king. Although some historians - notably Israel Finkelstein and members of his minimalist school - have disputed the Biblical record, claiming that there was no king and probably no Israel at this early period, this new find appears to demonstrate the presence of a king.
not far from the Valley of Elah The site is, literally, 1,500 yards from the spot where we stop our bus and let people get out to find the very stone used by David to kill Goliath, a tongue-in-cheek activity which provides a welcome break on the trip from Jerusalem to our excavation site. Return
an Israelite fortress Khirbet Qeiyafa sits right in the middle of four ancient cities - Azeka, Socho, Yarmut and Adulam - which the Bible claims to have been Israelite settlements. Unless it was an isolated Philistine outpost in the middle of hostile territory, therefore, that makes it an Israelite fortress. Return
demonstrate the presence Until the entire text is deciphered we cannot be sure exactly what it will demonstrate. It might, for all we know, be urging a local judge to submit the dispute over the slave to a Philistine king! There is also the question of whether, supposing that it is an Israelite king, the text refers to Saul, David or one of his successors. Nevertheless, it does appear that Finkelstein's minimalist school is becoming increasingly untenable as new evidence piles up. At the very least the ostracon points to a society sufficiently organsed to have judges and kings. Return
© Kendall K. Down 2009
